Your day is under siege by interruptions. It’s on you to fight back.
Rework
Each day at work this year has felt like a battle in a never ending war against interruptions. An onslaught of distractions come from every angle. Email, g-chat messages, and calls over the radio are just a handful of the many ways my attention is diverted.
Some of these requests are “fires” that demand immediate attention. If you work in manufacturing like I do, then you know how urgent these requests can be.
But there are other types of interruptions that can be prevented or avoided. Learning to cope with the non-urgent requests in a way that keeps us focused on the important work can yield enormous boosts in productivity.
I want to share a few of my personal strategies that have helped me and my team stay focused this year and avoid responding to every threat of interruption.
Start with a Quick Meet-Up
At 7:30AM every morning I get together with my team and conduct a daily sync meeting. I communicate the priorities for the day and give each person a chance to ask questions and request any help that they need.
This short and regular meeting tremendously reduces the amount of follow-up communication needed throughout the rest of the day. For me this means less calls over the radio for help. In a traditional office setting, this might mean less texts or emails.
Stick to a Plan
Unless you like to work overtime, you only have 8 hours in a day to get your priorities accomplished. That’s not a lot of time. You better have a plan written down the night before.
Without a plan for the day you’re more likely to get distracted and lose sight of what’s important. When distractions arise, you won’t have a reason to say no because you haven’t previously thought of something else that you need to do.
Write down your top 2-3 priorities for the day. The physical act of writing them down will help you commit to accomplishing them. If you don’t decide what your priorities are, then I guarantee someone else will.
Default to “No”
When unsolicited interruptions come in the form of requests, I always default to saying “no” in my head first. Then I try to evaluate if what is being asked of me is more important than accomplishing the goals for the day that I previously committed to.
Be a helpful colleague. But be wary of saying “yes” too quickly. Think of each task you do outside of those 2-3 top priorities as distractions that must be avoided.
How to Say “No” Without Sounding Unhelpful
A mentor of mine once gave me a great tip for deftly saying “no” to a request without hurting feelings or sounding unhelpful. When someone interrupts you with a problem that they’re having and requests your help, you empathize with their struggle, but then ask to delay your help to another time.
An example of how this tactic might play out in conversation looks like this:
Teresa: Hey Scott! I’m sorry to bother you, but I need help figuring out the best design for a material flow rack at the motor install workstation. I have a couple of sketches here and I would like your quick feedback.
Scott: I’d love to help you vet some ideas, Teresa, but I’m in the middle of a report I need to finish for my manager. Do you mind finding time on my calendar later this weekend scheduling a meeting for us to get together?
Everybody has been in a situation similar to this before. A colleague approaches you with a question or request and they promise that it’ll be quick. You want to be helpful so you say, “Sure, how can I help.” Next thing you know 30 minutes or more has gone by and you’ve lost all momentum on whatever task you were previously working on.
Throw in a few more similar interruptions like this and your productivity for the day has completely tanked. You may be the friendliest and most helpful person in the office, but at the end of the day you haven’t accomplished anything substantial.
When you refuse initial help and ask the requester to schedule something at a later time you accomplish two things:
- You have eliminated the immediate distraction and can get right back to your important work.
- Chances are high that the request wasn’t actually all that important and the requester will forget to schedule a meeting with you before they get back to their desk.
Conclusion
Interruptions are obvious drains on our productivity. Some of them, like urgent requests to fix a piece of equipment that has gone down on an assembly line, are unavoidable “fires” that we must respond to.
But other times we choose to let mundane interruptions distract us. Because we fall short in our communication, or fail to plan our day and set priorities, we allow ourselves to respond to non-urgent requests.
Interruptions are the enemy of productivity. Find tactics that help you stay focused on doing the important work.
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